to kill me. Why?’
‘Travis Warden has probably told you a tall tale about me, yes? That I am opposed to the Group’s plan to save the planet because it will wipe out my profits? And that by killing you I can prevent the Group from finding the Atlantean meteorite they need to channel earth energy.’
‘Something like that.’
Glas nodded. ‘What would you say if I told you that controlling such energy is only a minor part of the Group’s true goals?’
‘I actually wouldn’t be too surprised,’ Nina told him with a humourless smile. ‘I didn’t trust him any more than I trust you.’
‘Then you are perceptive, as well as a survivor. Warden is a leech and a liar – his only interests are power and money.’
‘But you were happy to be part of his little Super Best Friends club while it suited you.’
Glas leaned forward. ‘The Group is . . . an exceptionally powerful organisation. Its original members formed it from a collaboration of much older groups after the Second World War, with the aim of using global commerce to prevent such a conflict from ever happening again.’
‘It hasn’t exactly done a great job,’ said a disapproving Eddie. ‘There’ve been wars pretty much the whole time since 1945.’
‘But not massive wars,’ Glas countered. ‘Not the kind that can smash entire industrialised countries and destroy the global economy. The Group’s influence helped stop some of these flashpoints from starting larger fires. A word to the right person at the right time can cool even the hottest head. For example, the Cuban Missile Crisis was not stopped because both sides saw sense – it stopped because they were made to see sense.’
‘You’re trying to tell me the Group is a force for good?’ said Nina in disbelief.
He was unapologetic. ‘That was its original intent, yes. And for twenty or thirty years it was successful. But over time, power began to corrupt. An old and inevitable story. The Group stopped influencing the decisions of governments, and instead began controlling them.’
‘Buying power. People like Dalton.’
‘Yes, but on a greater scale than you can imagine. The Group holds power over senior politicians in over a hundred countries. If you have ever wondered why the so-called left and right seem increasingly similar wherever you go, it is because both sides have the same backers. The more alike people think, the less conflict there will be between them. That is the Group’s motivation. To end the wastefulness of conflict.’
Eddie pursed his lips. ‘And that’s bad because . . .?’
‘There are different ways to do so,’ Glas said. ‘The Khmer Rouge ended conflict in Cambodia by murdering anyone it considered a potential opponent – over two million people.’
‘So that’s why the Group wants control of earth energy?’ Nina asked. ‘To use as a weapon?’
To her surprise, he chuckled. ‘No, no. Nothing that crude.’ His smile rapidly faded. ‘Are you familiar with the theory of exogenesis?’
The sudden change of subject left her briefly bewildered. ‘Uh . . . the basics, I guess. It’s the idea that the earth was seeded with the building blocks of life by comets and meteorites. Or, if you take things a step further, there’s the concept of panspermia – that life itself was actually brought to earth after developing somewhere else.’ Eddie tried to contain a smirk. ‘Oh, God,’ she said impatiently. ‘What?’
‘Come on. Panspermia?’
His past and current wives were briefly united in eye-rolling disapproval. ‘He never changes, does he?’ Sophia sighed.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Nina replied. Eddie just shrugged. She turned back to Glas. ‘The “sky stone” that ultimately caused Atlantis’s destruction, the meteorite – you think it was carrying exogenesitic material?’
‘Is that even a real word?’ Eddie said.
‘Shush!’
Glas nodded. ‘Life, we believe, was brought to this planet four billion years ago by a meteorite. One single, very specific meteorite. It contained not only the naturally superconducting metal needed to channel an earth energy reaction, but also the proto-DNA from which all life on the planet evolved. The unmutated, pure, original form.’
The words gave Nina an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. ‘That . . . that sounds an awful lot like Kristian Frost’s plan,’ she said. ‘To use a sample of pure Atlantean DNA to create a biological weapon.’
‘I know.’
‘You know, or the Group knows?’
‘Both. The Group considered Kristian Frost for membership, but chose not to approach him – partly because we distrusted his motives, but also because we knew the Brotherhood of Selasphoros was working against him. If the Group had known his true